10 Patient Safety Tools on Hand Hygiene: Global Handwashing Day

Tuesday, Oct. 15 is Global Handwashing Day. Hand washing, while essential to infection control and prevention, suffers from perennially low compliance rates, sometimes as low as 40 percent in healthcare settings, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control.

Celebrate improving hand hygiene today and all year round with a variety of hand hygiene resources available for download for use in your facility.

1. WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Healthcare. The World Health Organization report contains information on healthcare-associated infections, models of transmission by hands, a review of methods for hand hygiene, recommended methods for hand hygiene, behavioral considerations for improving hand hygiene compliance and a review of potential barriers to hand hygiene.

2. CDC Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Healthcare Settings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released recommendations of the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee and the HICPAC/SHEA/APIC/IDSA Hand Hygiene Task Force in 2002. This is still the most current source of recommendations.

6. "Keep Calm and Wash Your Hands" Poster. The CDC offers a hand hygiene reminder poster modeled after the British World War II motivational slogan "Keep Calm and Carry On" for reminding people in healthcare facilities to wash their hands.

*9. iScrub app. The Iowa City-based University of Iowa's computational epidemiology group offers an app for iPhone and iPod Touch for tracking hand hygiene compliance. The app, iScrub, allows providers to record their observations and emails them the values for filing purposes.

Navigate to the iScrub page to download the app on the Apple iTunes store free of charge.

*10. Educational Rap: Get Your Bubbleez On. Pendleton, Ore.-based St. Anthony Hospital has created an exciting and engaging music video about the importance of hand washing in healthcare entitled "Get Your Bubbleez On."